Talk about your non-controversial assertions.
In other news. how ya doin’, @octopus? Long time no see.
Yeah once that idiot show up, it’s over.
Trump is doing great damage to the US with regards to arguably its most important source of power and that is worldwide cultural influence. However, hyperbolic rhetoric about Republicans on the internet going all the way back to Lincoln AND ostracizing family member is counterproductive. That’s all I am saying. We aren’t going to change the world bloviating here. I am curious in a decade or so how these differing tactics will have worked.
All of that is awful and unfortunately state sanctioned abuse in prison and other state controlled facilities is a symptom of a very ugly property of our national character. However, all of that has been going on in one form or another in American prisons for as long as I have been alive if not longer. If one of my family members was a sadistic prison guard, then yes, I couldn’t deal with that person.
What if they weren’t a prison guard, but they were enthusiastic and supportive of the prison guard’s actions? Because that’s often what we’re talking about here.
I consider having to listen to shit like that a form of emotional abuse, at least that’s how it feels.
I’m not on Facebook so I don’t have to listen to my relatives’ opinion about such things, and we don’t talk politics. But if someone were constantly crowing about brutality and racism, yeah, I would not be hanging out with them.
I just make a distinction between low-information voters, and the not-too-bright, and people who constantly express abhorrent opinions to everyone in earshot.
Sure, but when it comes to the Chinese version of such state sanctioned abuse of inmates in state controlled facilities, you say you’d be willing to cut off a family member just for “enthusiastically supporting” such abuse, not even actually inflicting it.
I think you’re relying on something of a double standard here. [ETA: ninja’d by @Spice_Weasel.]
A related musing: Yeah, I think the constant barrage of modern social media is exacerbating such situations. Both my parents had immediate family members who were significantly more conservative and low-information than they were, and I remember a few metaphorical turds in the punchbowl at family gatherings when those relatives said some stupid shit in passing.
But the occasional and in-person nature of those gatherings meant that (a) there was social pressure on the relatives in question to tone their shit down a bit, as well as pressure on the rest of us not to escalate it, and (b) it was happening maybe once or twice a year.
If you have to deal with unbridled relatives showing their entire bigoted hateful ass on social media multiple times a day with their online squad of fellow MAGA cheerleaders, I could see how that could get very exhausting very fast.
Any form of enforcement that relies upon the use of force has the potential to get ugly. I make a distinction between advocating and enforcing policy and being sadistic. I don’t think border control is intrinsically problematic in an era of nation-states. But, if every atrocity or sadistic act is sufficient reason to poison a whole policy, ideology, or other set of actions very little could get done in the real world. So, I can and do condemn the acts of deliberate cruelty but the overall sentiment for and enforcement of border control doesn’t bother me.
Pretty sure I’ve posted this before, but I’m even more sure that I’m posting it again 
At this point, there’s only two positions for a Trump supporter. You either:
- Like him because of who he is, or
- Like him in spite of who he is
And I would submit to you that one answer is much worse than the other, but that both answers are awful.
There is some theoretical validity to a claim of ignorance, because the RW has so successfully created an impregnable fortress of lies propagated via every conceivable form of communication (“flood the zone with bullshit,” “muzzle velocity”).
But …
- inconceivable degrees of confirmation bias and tribalism,
- never asking questions,
- accepting as a first principle that everything your side says is true, while everything else is pure bullshit
I can and I will never absolve you of that.
You joined the cult. Every single day, you consciously renewed your membership.
I think you can be ignorant of the extent of how much damage Trump is doing if you get all your news from the right wing propaganda machine, but I don’t think it’s possible to be ignorant of the fact that Trump is a bad person and a bad leader. You only need to listen to his own words for a minute or two to know he’s a moron and a narcissist and basically a toddler with a machine gun. I don’t believe that anyone could actually listen to Trump and think “yeah, that guy is smart and a good leader.”
You support him because you hope he’s hurting the people you hate more than he’s hurting you.
Somebody could make exactly the same statement about “the overall sentiment for and enforcement of” Chinese anti-terrorism efforts fighting Uyghur Islamist-extremist jihadi terrorism by means of the Xinjiang internment camps.
I mean, sure, there is some Uyghur Islamist-extremist jihadi terrorism, like the Kunming railway station knife massacre of dozens of people in 2014. Likewise, there is some violent crime among undocumented immigrants in the US. But I think we’d all agree that in neither case does legitimate “enforcement” require large-scale internment and sadistic abuse of a much broader group of detainees.
So why do you think that cutting ties with a relative for enthusiastically supporting such aggressive internment policies, which as we see provide a lot of scope for atrocities and sadistic abuse, is appropriate when the policies are Chinese but not when they’re American?
For those that wonder what to do with your family members who get into arguments with you at family get-togethers, you can try the suggestion in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2zyjbH9zzA .
I don’t support prison rape but I don’t have a problem arresting and incarcerating murderers. You can be for a portion of an overall system and against other portions of the same system without it being a contradiction.
I debated for a while replying to this topic. I probably won’t be posting in it much…
… But I can answer this.
I don’t vote. I’ve never voted. I never will vote.
I actually made a pit thread a decade ago or so where I even said I don’t vote, although I’m not assed to look for it right now and Link you to it. It’s nice to say many people in that thread were not happy with me.
But I dislike Trump. I don’t like him at all. I don’t like the administration, I don’t like what’s going on, I don’t like the decisions being made, I actually detest him.
But the thing is, I don’t feel like if I had voted it would have made a difference in fact somebody posted above showing a graph that shows that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
I never really understood the mentality behind “if you don’t vote then you have no right to complain”.
Put simply, I’m indifferent. I’m apathetic. Not just toward political stuff, everything in my life. It’s like my emotions have shut down, I haven’t left the house in like 25 years, I am a shut-in. I care very little about anything in my life, all I do is make sure I get food and drink and that’s it, I don’t take care of anything else, I am not concerned about the world outside, and I don’t care who the president is. My life is going to suck regardless of who the president is. I mean I just can’t make myself care any more than I do now which is..0. I do not care about politics much at all, I find them boring and I’m mostly indifferent to them.,
But then Trump came along… And I actually started feeling something for once. Like, I really despise the guy.
So yes, I am not a fan of trump, but it’s still not enough to make me vote.
I did make a topic a couple years ago saying that I was wrong in the “I don’t vote” pit thread that I made because I see that Trump was ruining the country, and I said that I was going to try to vote from then on…
But I didn’t. Apathy won over yet again like it usually does. I say a lot of things. Like, I am constantly making appointments and then canceling last minute. I don’t even bother calling to cancel I just don’t show up. I am so indifferent it’s not funny, I’ve actually been in a psych hospital five times in the last year because of my incredible indifference.
I had a broken foot a few years ago and I didn’t even bother taking care of it because I just didn’t care to do it. If I don’t care to actually heal my own foot and change the bandages and clean the wounds, what makes you think I’m going to care who the president is? I don’t even care about myself.
So bottom line, I hate Donald Trump, but I don’t vote. And no, to officially answer your question, if I could go back and choose the vote, I still wouldn’t, because I don’t give a crap about voting. I’m never going to vote. I don’t even know about politics that well, you really want an ignorant person to be voting because here’s what I’m going to do if I’m forced to do it, I’m going to get in the line I’m going to flip a coin. A coin will decide who I vote for for president. I don’t follow the candidates, I don’t watch debates, I couldn’t tell you what they stand for. Why would people want an ignorant fool to vote anyway? Doesn’t really make much sense. So I just don’t vote.
I wish I had the caring to vote, and among doing many other things that I don’t do… But the caring is simply not there.
Fuck me, I guess.
Also, while I’m in this topic, I also disagree with cutting out MAGA friends and family. I think that’s just foolish, in general. I would never do it.
I can disagree with someone but still remain their friend or want them in my house. Even if it’s a strong disagreement like political leaning.
It reminds me of stuff I used to see on Facebook back when Kevin Spacey was in the news for being a sexual predator, and someone else… I think it was Harvey Weinstein…
But I saw one person posting something like “you better not watch this person’s movies anymore, and if you do you’re a bad person”.
I’m paraphrasing, that’s not verbatim, but that was the main message,..
.. and I thought to myself “I’m going to like a movie regardless of what the person starred in or directed it did. It doesn’t just suddenly make it a bad movie. If I like a movie then I’m unable to hit a switch to automatically dislike it. I am going to continue liking it and yes, I am going to continue watching it. It doesn’t mean I support pedophilia or sexual assault, it just means I like the freaking movie”
That’s sort of like this “cut out all MAGA people from your life” in my opinion. No, I’m not going to do that, and I’m not going to feel bad for not doing that either. Family and friends are important to me and that overpowers whatever differences we have in political opinion. News flash… Is actually possible to get along with people who have a different opinion from you.
Also @Dinsdale is the best poster in the thread.
Edit: I was originally too harsh. You have serious mental illness and should seek therapy.
Unfortunately to see through Trump, one has to have some knowledge of global affairs, world history since 1939 (preferably further back through European history), an understanding of why western Europeans haven’t fought amongst themselves since 1945, as well as some sense of what statesman/stateswomanship is. Trump encouraging people to “lock her up”, or to beat up the left, or his exhortations of “fake news”, or his refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, are all signs that he’s a colossal bullshitter and can’t be trusted.
The fact that the ignorantia believed that the election was stolen, simply because Trump said so, without any evidence whatsoever, is another indication.
The fact that Trump stated that ingesting bleach and shoving a UV light (or whatever the fuck it was) up one’s ass as a treatment for Covid, is another sign.
The extraordinary amount of extremely obvious and recognizable BS that was believed by the MAGA people was appalling.
“Pretty convenient”? Well, it’s damn close to destroying a relatively peaceful and prosperous world.
I’m considering cutting and pasting this post as a letter to my family.
Here’s what I said here in 2016, I stand by it.
Can you all stop with this moronic “now’s the time to pull together as Americans nonsense? That’s not happening. When you voted for Trump you specifically voted against an America where we all pull together. You voted for racism and divisiveness. This isn’t Mitt Romney, we’re not arguing about the tax rate for the top 1%. You voted for racism. You rang a bell that can’t be un-rung. Reading between the lines of this “we’re all Americans” sentiment, I see that the guilt of what you have done is already sinking in. You want us to make you feel better and give you a pass. The fact is that because of what you’ve done, we’re not all Americans; your version of America is in direct contrast with my version of America. Because of what you’ve done, we’ll never all be in the same America again.
Donald Trump ran a campaign that asked voters to choose: us or them. I choose them. I choose my brown, black, straight, gay, trans, Muslim, Jewish, Atheist, Baha’i brothers and sisters. I choose them; I choose them even if you and I have known each in real life for years and I’ve never met them. I choose them even if you and I are related. I choose them because by voting for Trump you forced me to choose.
Have anyone else noticed that all these people talking about putting aside our differences and giving Trump a chance are white? This is one of those times where we need to check our privilege. We can go back to our lives and smugly say “don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him” because deep down we know we’ll be ok. Our black, brown, gay and non-Christian brothers and sisters won’t be ok, they are incredibly vulnerable. When we talk about coming together we mean white people coming together and saying to the rest of the country" sucks to be you." We’re saying we are going to support a candidate endorsed by the Klan so that Thanksgiving won’t be awkward. Maybe if you cast a racist vote, you’ve earned some awkwardness, maybe you being made to feel bad for what you’ve done is exactly what should happen.
I’m fortunate nobody in my immediate family has gone MAGA. I fell out of touch with all cousins long ago, so I don’t know about them and am hesitant to find out.
I have had old friends cut me off permanently because I wasn’t left enough. One because in 2016 I said I would vote for Hillary Clinton. Another time because I like Joan Baez (pictured). I still don’t understand. My old friend had gone so far left he accused Joan Baez of ripping off other folk artists and my love for her meant we could never be friends again. That was one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me. I had never heard any bad accusations against her before. Some years later I asked him to reconsider and he said
“I still have strong opinions and voice them and many times they are contrary to general thinking. … I’ll try… not sure how to take all this so…aloow me time.”
That was 4 years ago and no word since. 